"He didn't mention them," said Mrs. Idiot. "He--"
"He's going to preach a series of sermons on lies, I presume," said the Idiot. "He's tackled Santa Claus first, as being the most seasonable of the lot, eh? Jack the Giant-Killer ought to be a good subject for a ministerial attack."
"Well, he pulled poor old Santa Claus to pieces," said Mrs. Idiot, with a sigh.
"Why didn't you bring me a piece of him as a souvenir?" demanded the Idiot. "Just a lock of his hair for my collection of curios? What was done with the remains?"
Mrs. Idiot laughed as she pulled over her gloves and smoothed them upon her lap.
"There weren't any remains," she answered. "When Dr. Preachly got through with him there wasn't a vestige of the old chap left. To begin with, he was a lie, the doctor said. Then he went on and showed that he was a wickedly partial old fellow--a very snob, he called him--because he gives fine things to the children of the rich and little or nothing to the children of the poor. He filled the little folk with hope and brought them disappointment, and so on. It was a powerful sermon, although I wanted to weep over it."
"Go ahead and weep," said the Idiot; "it's the appropriate thing to do. I don't wonder you wanted to cry; you've always liked Dr. Preachly."
"And you hate to see him make a--ah--a--well, you know--of himself in the pulpit; and I quite agree with you. I rather like Preachly myself. It is too bad to see a well-meaning man like that batting his brains out against the rock of Gibraltar, whether suicide is sin or not. What has put him in this despondent mood? Do you suppose he has heard?"
"Oh, the same old slippers," said the Idiot. "You know the ones I mean--the ones he's going to get from Santa Claus. Really, I'm not surprised, after all. If I were a minister, and realized that truckloads of embroidered slippers of every size and color, covered with stags of red worsted jumping over rivulets of yellow floss, with split agates for eyes set in over the toe, were to be dumped in my front yard every Christmas Eve by that old reprobate, Santa Claus, I think I, too, would set him down as a fraud, or an overworked cobbler, anyhow."
[Illustration: "'DR. PREACHLY ONLY GOT EIGHT PAIRS LAST XMAS'"]